06-29-2006, 05:30 AM
Most marrieds stick with first spouse: StatsCan
Updated Wed. Jun. 28 2006 1:53 PM ET
Canadian Press
TORONTO -- With the summer wedding season in full swing, Statistics Canada released a report Wednesday suggesting that most Canadians who marry will walk up the aisle only once, and fewer than one per cent exchange vows more than twice.
The idea to crunch this data evolved from reading news stories about a real estate agent getting married for a fourth time, said Susan Crompton, editor-in-chief of Canadian Social Trends and co-author of the report Till Death Do Us Part? The Risk of First and Second Marriage Dissolution.
What was found was that serial marriages are the case for "a tiny, tiny fraction of people,'' she said.
"We thought poor old marriage, it really seems to be under attack. We think it's going down the drain, and it's not at all. People are sticking with their first spouses. And we thought that was a good story.''
Just over 16.6 million people aged 25 and over had been legally married at some point in their life in 2001. Of this group, 89 per cent, or nearly 14.8 million people, were married once, while about 10 per cent or 1.7 million had married twice.
On the other hand, roughly 137,000, less than one per cent, had tied the knot more than twice, virtually all of them three times.
The Statistics Canada study found several factors were associated with the risk of a breakdown in first and subsequent marriages. These included the age of the bride and groom, the length of the marriage itself and the strength of an individual's commitment to the institution.
"Given that all other variables, all other things, are equal, if you are a teenager when you married the first time, you ran a risk about twice as high as an older person of breaking up,'' Crompton said from Ottawa.
The report noted that the longer a couple has been married, the greater their chances of staying together.
Getting married in the 1980s or '90s compared with getting married in earlier decades played a significant role in the breakup of a first marriage, Crompton added.
"The only thing I can suggest there is that the '80s and '90s is when we started to really question the role of each partner in the marriage and people were sort of fighting and confused, perhaps, about what men were responsible for and what women were responsible for,'' she said.
"It was in the '80s that women really began to enter the workforce in a significant way, so that might be one of the reasons why the decade in which you married seemed to play a role.''
A strong commitment to the institution of marriage appears to make a difference as well.
"Believing in marriage with a capital M is good for your marriage with a small m _ you have to believe this is good for you, and that seems to have a protective effect against marital dissolution,'' Crompton said.
If marriage isn't really important to someone, there's a 170 per cent higher risk of a breakup than for a person who considered it very important to their happiness, she said.
If a couple lived together before their first marriage, there was a 50 per cent higher chance of breaking up at some point, the researchers found.
But although living common law was a significant predictor of first marriage dissolution, it had "no impact whatsoever'' on a second marriage dissolving, said Crompton.
"People who marry for the second time are far more likely to have lived with their spouse before they married,'' she said.
In a first marriage, the risk of divorce is 73 per cent lower if a couple have children, the statistics suggest.
And the findings indicate second marriages aren't more likely to dissolve when children are part of the equation, Crompton said.
"It's commonly believed that one of the biggest factors that play a role in the breakup of a second marriage is children, and we found in our model that that really didn't play a role,'' she said.
"It just wasn't significant.''
Updated Wed. Jun. 28 2006 1:53 PM ET
Canadian Press
TORONTO -- With the summer wedding season in full swing, Statistics Canada released a report Wednesday suggesting that most Canadians who marry will walk up the aisle only once, and fewer than one per cent exchange vows more than twice.
The idea to crunch this data evolved from reading news stories about a real estate agent getting married for a fourth time, said Susan Crompton, editor-in-chief of Canadian Social Trends and co-author of the report Till Death Do Us Part? The Risk of First and Second Marriage Dissolution.
What was found was that serial marriages are the case for "a tiny, tiny fraction of people,'' she said.
"We thought poor old marriage, it really seems to be under attack. We think it's going down the drain, and it's not at all. People are sticking with their first spouses. And we thought that was a good story.''
Just over 16.6 million people aged 25 and over had been legally married at some point in their life in 2001. Of this group, 89 per cent, or nearly 14.8 million people, were married once, while about 10 per cent or 1.7 million had married twice.
On the other hand, roughly 137,000, less than one per cent, had tied the knot more than twice, virtually all of them three times.
The Statistics Canada study found several factors were associated with the risk of a breakdown in first and subsequent marriages. These included the age of the bride and groom, the length of the marriage itself and the strength of an individual's commitment to the institution.
"Given that all other variables, all other things, are equal, if you are a teenager when you married the first time, you ran a risk about twice as high as an older person of breaking up,'' Crompton said from Ottawa.
The report noted that the longer a couple has been married, the greater their chances of staying together.
Getting married in the 1980s or '90s compared with getting married in earlier decades played a significant role in the breakup of a first marriage, Crompton added.
"The only thing I can suggest there is that the '80s and '90s is when we started to really question the role of each partner in the marriage and people were sort of fighting and confused, perhaps, about what men were responsible for and what women were responsible for,'' she said.
"It was in the '80s that women really began to enter the workforce in a significant way, so that might be one of the reasons why the decade in which you married seemed to play a role.''
A strong commitment to the institution of marriage appears to make a difference as well.
"Believing in marriage with a capital M is good for your marriage with a small m _ you have to believe this is good for you, and that seems to have a protective effect against marital dissolution,'' Crompton said.
If marriage isn't really important to someone, there's a 170 per cent higher risk of a breakup than for a person who considered it very important to their happiness, she said.
If a couple lived together before their first marriage, there was a 50 per cent higher chance of breaking up at some point, the researchers found.
But although living common law was a significant predictor of first marriage dissolution, it had "no impact whatsoever'' on a second marriage dissolving, said Crompton.
"People who marry for the second time are far more likely to have lived with their spouse before they married,'' she said.
In a first marriage, the risk of divorce is 73 per cent lower if a couple have children, the statistics suggest.
And the findings indicate second marriages aren't more likely to dissolve when children are part of the equation, Crompton said.
"It's commonly believed that one of the biggest factors that play a role in the breakup of a second marriage is children, and we found in our model that that really didn't play a role,'' she said.
"It just wasn't significant.''